Revisiting a Classic: Things Fall Apart Is Being Brought Back to Center Stage after 50 Years for Its Role in Shaping Modern African Literature

Rogers, Ibram, Diverse Issues in Higher Education

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As a 26-year-old English teacher in 1958, Chinua Achebe had no idea that the book he was writing would become a literary classic, not only in Africa but also throughout the world.

"There was no example to go by," says Achebe. "There was no way I could gauge."

He could only try to articulate the feelings he had for his countrymen and women. Achebe had a burning desire to tell the true story of Africa and African humanity. He remembers thinking that this feeling he had "must not be allowed to go to waste. I must use this opportunity to decide what to write and how to write it, and the language in which to write it."

The language in which he decided to write his book would prove to be pivotal, because in stories about African people African people in the 1950s, they rarely spoke like humans.

"They made animal sounds," Achebe says. "They shrieked, shouted, they screamed. So that was one thing that I knew I had to do. I had to insist on the language similar to what I heard in my village; the language of the elders who were eloquent. I had to attempt to do it. But would it succeed? I had no way of knowing."

Achebe fused English and Igbo (pronounced "EBO"), the language spoken by the Ibo people, a cultural group in Nigeria, using English words with Igbo syntax, idioms and proverbs. The end result was one of the most acclaimed novels in literary history: Things Fall Apart. It was an instant classic. A literary masterpiece. The archetypal African novel.

Things Fall Apart has become a required text in schools throughout Africa and the English-speaking world. It has been translated into more than 50 languages and more than 10 million copies have been sold. It's often included on lists of the top 100 novels from Africa to the United States.

Commemorating a Milestone

This year marks the 50-year anniversary of Things Fall Apart. Published in 1958 by London's Heinemann Press, commemorative events have already taken place and--others will be held throughout the world to observe the anniversary of the novel and to honor the 77-year-old Achebe, who teaches at Bard College in New York.

The Association of Nigerian Authors is planning a two-day celebration in the country. The University of London is hosting a two-day conference in October titled "Things Fall Apart, 1958-2008." Bard College, hosted a panel earlier this month titled "Revisiting Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart." One of the events in New York was held in February at the PEN American Center, as Toni Morrison, Ha Jin and other literary luminaries paid tribute to both the author and the novel. Achebe, along with Princeton University's Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah, spoke at an event in part organized by the university's Center for African American Studies. Furthermore, a local program Princeton Reads also encouraged the community to read Things Fall Apart in March In addition, events have been or will be held in France, Ghana, India, Kenya, Portugal, South Africa and a number of other countries.

A Spark in African Literature

Scholars have described Things Fall Apart as the spark that ignited the proliferation of modern African novel writing.

There is an "innumerable list of writers and critics--including myself--who have been inspired to contribute to the growth of African literature and make it a force to be reckoned with among the literary achievements of mankind," says Dr. Isidore Okpewho, a Nigerian novelist and State University of New York at Binghamton distinguished professor of Africana Studies, English and comparative literature. "I doubt that we could have done this without Achebe's bold and pioneering work."

Not only did Things Fall Apart clear the rough terrain for other novels to follow, but it "has contributed more than any other single book in establishing both the Ibo and the African continent as a normal society, a society of culture, tradition, law and government," says Obiwu Iwuanyanwu, director of the writing center at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, who has written extensively on Achebe. …

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